By Vanguard Staff
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The future of one of the most significant bipartisan housing bills passed by Congress in decades was thrown into uncertainty after President Donald Trump canceled a planned White House signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, according to the Consumer Choice Center.
The organization said it had expected Trump to sign the legislation into law following overwhelming bipartisan approval in both the House and Senate. However, the Consumer Choice Center said the president instead announced in a series of Truth Social posts that he had canceled the signing ceremony, calling the housing measure “of minor importance.”
According to the Consumer Choice Center, Trump wrote, “The cancellation was necessary,” before promoting the SAVE America Act and renewed demands for voter identification legislation.
The Consumer Choice Center said it is now unclear whether Trump intends to sign the legislation, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. Under the U.S. Constitution, a bill generally becomes law if the president neither signs nor vetoes it within 10 days, excluding Sundays, while Congress remains in session.
The ROAD to Housing Act was co-sponsored by Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and is designed to address the nation’s housing shortage through a series of regulatory reforms intended to increase housing production.
The Consumer Choice Center, which supported the legislation, described it as the largest housing affordability package passed by Congress in decades. The organization said the United States currently faces a shortage of an estimated 4 million or more housing units.
Stephen Kent of the Consumer Choice Center sharply criticized the decision to cancel the signing ceremony.
“This has to be the most unsavvy political move I’ve ever seen,” Kent said. “Voters are telling pollsters again and again that access to housing and the price tag on new single-family homes and apartments is the number one issue underlying concerns over ‘affordability.'”
Kent also warned that delaying the legislation could have significant political consequences.
“What we’re witnessing is one of the biggest slaps in the face to consumers and American families in recent memory,” Kent said. “Americans, particularly young people, have all but given up on this foundation block of the American Dream—home ownership. It means something to people, the same people who voted President Trump into office. It’s a real betrayal to hold up this legislation, and we can only hope that a veto is not what comes next.”
Kent concluded by criticizing the linkage between the housing legislation and unrelated election legislation.
“Holding the American Dream hostage in exchange for an unrelated and more divisive piece of legislation is a particularly cynical move for this White House,” Kent said. “Consumers won’t forget it. We hope the President realizes the miscalculation being made here and signs the ROAD to Housing Act into law.”
Before the signing ceremony was canceled, the Consumer Choice Center had praised the legislation as a major step toward addressing housing affordability by reducing regulatory barriers to new home construction.
“For decades, local governments have made it expensive, complicated, and legally fraught to build new homes,” Kent said. “At the heart of America’s housing crunch is too much rulemaking that says ‘No’ and not nearly enough that says ‘Yes.’ This bill finally starts to flip that equation. It’s not a perfect piece of legislation — and it can’t do anything to control interest rates or city councils at odds with development, but it does make the regulatory environment less grueling for homebuilders by providing grants for preapproved housing designs and lessening the environmental review process for certain projects.”
Among the bill’s provisions highlighted by the Consumer Choice Center are streamlined environmental reviews for federally assisted housing projects, tying Community Development Block Grant funding to housing production, creation of a $200 million annual Innovation Fund to encourage local zoning reform, elimination of the permanent chassis requirement for manufactured housing, and programs to convert vacant commercial buildings into housing while accelerating approvals for accessory dwelling units.
The organization also noted that the legislation would remove what it described as decades-old regulatory barriers affecting manufactured housing, a sector relied upon by millions of Americans.
Kent argued that the legislation addressed broader economic and political concerns beyond housing.
“The shortage of available homes is driving political discontent that cascades into every part of American life,” Kent said. “Young families who give up on homeownership don’t just lose a house — research shows they lose faith in the value of hard work itself. That’s why this legislation matters beyond the policy details. Congress has finally given the country a supply-side answer to a supply-side problem, and the White House was right to complement it by slashing tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper that were adding nearly $11,000 to the cost of every new home. Consumers are going to benefit.”
The Consumer Choice Center said it remained concerned about provisions restricting large institutional investors from owning more than 350 single-family homes, arguing such investors own less than 1 percent of the nation’s single-family housing stock and that ownership restrictions could raise constitutional questions and discourage investment in housing rehabilitation.
Despite those concerns, the organization characterized the bill’s supply-side reforms as the most significant pro-consumer housing legislation in a generation and urged that it be implemented quickly.
“There is no more time to be wasted, and no more patience left among Americans for inaction on housing,” Kent said. “Let’s start building.”
Tags: housing, ROAD to Housing Act, Donald Trump, affordable housing, Congress, Consumer Choice Center
